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Published: July 13th 2005
Trekking in the high andies
'Well darling, if you insist…' I muttered despondently as Claire declared that she and her mum Pat were off to see the Nazca lines (see The Monument Baggers) and it was too expensive for me to go along as we had already been there. What was I to do?.. stuck on my own in the town of Huraz in Peru, surrounded by the (arguably) best area for trekking and mountain climbing in South America - the Cordillera Blanca, home to most of the Andes highest peaks, which easily top almost everything in the northern hemisphere.
An opportunity not to be missed, as although Claire loves the walking, it’s the sleeping under the stars bit that isn’t quite so popular. So with a little trepidation given my 'advancing years' and state of health vis knees etc, I book myself on a 4-day trek called the Santa Cruz Loop, a trek described in the 'ultimate guide', the Lonely Planet, as an easy trek. Ha!
Day 1
When I book I am told that there will be three of us, me and an Australian couple. I turn up at 6.30am to find three Germans, two Frenchmen,
and an expected two Canadians who never showed up - no Australians. So after rushing around for a while our truly European team get into a minibus and stretch out for the 3 hour journey to the start point. Ha! (again) the bus moves twenty feet and all of a sudden about 15 Peruvians start to jump in. Two minutes later I am crushed into a space eighteen inches square with no leg room (even for me!), my rucksack on my knees, Peruvians very closely on all sides, and a grim expression on my face. Chill I think, it’ll be fun when you get there…
Sure enough we lose enough passengers in the towns on the was to be able to breathe after a couple of hours, and find ourselves climbing higher and higher into the mountains. In this area you start at 3000m (10,000 feet), and this was the level of our hotel (3080m actually, as my trusty wrist computer tells me - geek!), so its easy getting to great heights. And the bus took us over a mountain pass at 4800m (15,700 feet), not far short of the snow-line. Fantastic views all around, and a precipitous road
with countless switchbacks all added to the anticipation of a good trip.
Not much conversation going on between my camping colleagues, given the fact that I knew only Spanish (I use the word 'knew' in its loosest sense of course). I wasn’t totally useless, having a few French words gleaned from ´ello ´ello/Pink Panther/Monty Python, and a few German words from comic books and adverts - handy hoch, achtung, schnell schnell, Inglander pig dog, vorsprung durcht teknic - that sort of thing. But I feared this wasn’t the international language of the new millennia and kept to Spanish. The French couldn’t speak much Spanish or English (umm..), and the Germans spoke Spanish, English, German and probably a dozen others that they didn’t need this week. No comment. So I quickly voted on English as the common language to be adopted, and as no-one understood the motion, it was immediately passed. The joys of democracy. Oh, and did I mention that they were all about 20 years old?
We arrived at the start point still in uncertain silence and waited for our donkeys. Now I like trekking, but carrying all my stuff about is not what it’s all about,
and thankfully I was able to offload most of it onto the mules. So it was with a light pack and a light heart that six gringos, a guide, a donkey driver and his three favourite donkeys set off for the afternoons walk to the first campsite.
Three hours later, after walking through some great countryside and beginning to climb into the mountains for real, we got to our campsite for the night. Already the sun was beginning to set - this near the equator the days are always about 12 hours long - no warm summer nights, and it was beginning to get cold already. The donkeys had overtaken us hours before and the driver had unloaded them and put up three tents. The guide looked at the tents, looked at us and started to scratch his head. You could see the smoke rising as he made the mental calculation - eight people, three (two man) tents = two left over (or in the cold). Not good.
After questioning each of us for a few minutes to ensure we hadn’t brought a tent along that we had forgotten to mention (duh), we had to face it that,
Moody mountain
Think this is Artesonraju, very hard to climb apparentlytonight at least, we were short a tent. Luckily (?!) the guides tent had one of those overhanging bits about 1 metre square at the front for your rucksacks to be outside but not actually in the rain, so it was decided that the guide and donkey man would have to sleep in this, so that we gringos wouldn’t have to sleep three to a tent. I had no sympathy with this, if the guide couldn’t even be bothered to count the number of tents before leaving town, he could sleep in the cold as far as I was concerned.
It got darker and colder, and colder, and colder. By about 5.30. before it had actually got completely dark, we were all shivering like mad, adding all our layers to try and keep warm, knowing that not only would it get colder tonight, but tomorrow would be even colder because we were camping higher up. Fires are not allowed in the park, but we were given a pretty good meal from the stove, after which we sat looking at each other for a few minutes before deciding it was bed time. It was 6-30 and we had to get
up at 7 the next day, so 12 whole hours in bed - sounds great doesn't it?
That night I froze, at some stage all my bits went numb, I managed to warm one bit only for the others to go numb. Experienced campers will know you can get these great thermal mats to sleep on which do a reasonable job of separating you from the ground. I didn’t have one of these - I had a thin layer of foam rubber which had the amazing effect of making you think it was not there at all. There were therefore only three potential sleeping positions - on back (who sleeps on their back?), on right side (right hip hurts) or on left side (left shoulder and right knee hurts) Am I getting too old for this? With not much sleep, the night went on for ever. At some point I wondered why the hell I was here…
Day 2
Numb. Tired. This wasnt the camping trip I´d dreamed of. Dragged myself out of the sleeping bag and got out for some coffee and porridge. It was still dark in the valley we had camped in, the sun not
able to get over the mountains quickly enough to warm me. Eventually however, the breakfast and the lightening day brightened my mood and I was ready to walk again - this being the highlight day.
We walked for 3 hours uphill past spectacular scenery of mountain ranges, high passes and glaciers, until we reached Punto Union where the two high passes joined back to back. The path passed through between the mountains and one minute I am walking up to the top of a beautiful valley the next I have passed over and walking down into another one. We were at 4200m at this point, and I was glad for the months of acclimitisation I have had in bolivia, where even the lowlands are highlands.
Two hours later we had walked down the mountain the other side and to our campsite. I was walking with Max the german lad, when we noticed that Yanek the french kid was ahead - this wasnt the time for international niceties - we looked at each other, nodded and both broke into run, despite being very tired, to ensure that we got to the campsite ahead of the frenchman. Luckily he noticed nothing until
we rushed past and realised too late there was no chance of making it. My aging years prevented me from overtaking the youthful german, but overall a victory to the anglo-german alliance!
That night we played cards and I handed out tots of rum from the small supply of booze I had brought, but were still in bed before 8pm. I taught everyone a card game, Crazy 8's, which I figured was simple enough for all to understand. We had to play in three languages and I now know the names of the suits in english, german, french and spanish! It got a bit hotly contested - at one point I was playing against the two french guys and they started chattering amongst themselves - plotting against me! But with true British grit I withstood the unsportsman-like attack!
Again the night had drawn in very fast and we were higher than yesterday, but this time I had planned the addition of layers (“dress like an onion”) and maintained some body warmth until getting into the sleeping bag, still in all my clothes, for the night. Toes and fingers still contactable, but no more comfortable on the ground, I slept some.
Day 3
By the third morning I was pretty tired, not only from the exercise but from sleeping on the damn ground. However, the sun got over the hill earlier at this campsite and I was soon warmed by both this and the hot chocolate. Can't complain about the food at all - plenty of water and carbohydrate - the things you need for this type of trip to keep you walking.
That day we started by walking up to a glacial lake, passing through a valley that had alpine like vegetation and horses etc - all very pretty. The lake was inspiring, surrounded by snow covered mountains with huge overhangs of snow and ice which looked soooo ready to fall. I sat there quietly for over an hour, listening to the ice cracking high up and waiting armed with camera for something to fall and a spectacular picture to sell to national geographic. Nothing. Although the french guys did try and help by throwing large rocks around, hoping the noise reverberations would set something off. Of course, not long after we started to walk back down, I heard a great crash and looked around to see the very same bit of ice I had been watching come crashing down the mountain. Typical.
We then walked for nearly four hours down the valley. It was quite open and in full sun - not a lot of fun at high altitude where the thin atmosphere makes the sun very intense. I was wearing a lot of factor 30 but still could feel it lazering my neck, face and arms. By the time we got to the last nights campsite we were all very tired and I had nice juicy blister under my foot. We kept passing people coming up who looked dead on their feet, yet we had been told that the end was only a couple of hours walk the next day, so thought this lot must be pretty weak...
More games of cards and the last of the rum later, we crashed out knowing we had conquered the worst of the Santa Cruz valley, and only two hours to walk the next day back to the bus pickup. I actually slept that night; maybe the old bones were becoming used to the ground, or the donkey driver sleeping across my feet. Or maybe I was just knackered!
Day 4
Only 2 hours! Yeah, but this was almost the worst bit! With a blister the size of a fifty pence piece, the walk was very steep downhill for the whole time down the valley and into this admittedly gorgeous gorge. But ouch! Keen walkers amongst you will know that downhill is much worse than up. Uphill you just get into your pace that suits and plod onwards and upwards. Down is like a mad scramble of you against gravity, trying to find your footing on the rocks is very tiring and by the end of it I was truly finished with walking for a while. Now I understood why all the people yesterday looked so bad.
But the joy of getting to the end, in one piece and in front of the french and girls, was worth a hell of a lot. A great trip, feeling great and free by being in the open outdoors for so long. So they then put me in the corner of a minibus with twenty-plus others crammed in for the two hour journey back to Huaraz - which totally ruined my kharma and necessitated my retreating straight to a bar for the rest of the afternoon to recover my blissful state.
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Jez PAnton
non-member comment
Fun ???
Your too old for this BS !!, realise it and go home !, raise 4 kids and go to the same old bi\oring office everyday !. Now that's living !